Childhood drawings of airplanes with mismatched wings, toy balloons, perky flowers, snippets of letters copied from old notebooks—these are the loose tokens of memory being flung about by the surging, foaming waters in “The Word-Shimmering Sea,” Enrique Martinez Celaya’s large-scale yet intimate show at the Hispanic Museum and Library. Inspired by Diego Velazquez’s Portrait of a Little Girl, one of the masterpieces in the museum’s permanent collection and given dramatic placement in this exhibition, Martinez Celaya has arrayed a quartet of homages to the painting on the nearby walls as if the little girl were reminding us of her eternal presence. Even the splendid arches of the museum’s main room are brought into play. They’re strung with charming rows of paper airplanes made by schoolchildren from Martinez Celaya’s native town of Nueva Paz, Cuba. Everything in this show bobs with movement and emotion, the never-ending tug of leave-taking and homecoming. —James Wolcott